Munson: Beatles' studio propelled Johnston man

Feb. 5, 2014

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Piers Plaskitt

May Pang, right, is shown with John Lennon in the 1970s. Pang spent nearly two years with Lennon during his 'lost weekend' in Los Angeles and New York. / SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER

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Piers Plaskitt is the Brit-turned-Iowan whose career path epitomizes how the Beatles fundamentally changed the way the world listens to pop music.

When the Beatles shot to fame in 1963 in their native England, Plaskitt was a lad of 9 with his parents and three brothers. His family owned a cozy vacation home that overlooked Whitsand Bay in Cornwall. His first memory of the Beatles dates to the summer of ’63 on the beach as he heaved rocks into place while radio disc jockeys breathlessly hyped the Fab Four’s new hit song.

“We were building a dry stone wall, and the radio would be playing,” Plaskitt remembered. “And there would be a big ramp-up to the launch of a new single from the Beatles.”

Plaskitt, 59, now lives in Johnston but circles the globe as head of the pro audio company Solid State Logic, owned by Peter Gabriel. The Beatles gave Plaskitt his start in audio engineering 40 years ago when he was hired to work at the band’s Apple Studios in London.

I first met Plaskitt in 2003, when he took over Stella’s Blue Sky Diner in Urbandale in what was intended as a serene second career in semi-retirement in the restaurant business. (Note: It can be just as difficult to make money with restaurants as rock ’n’ roll.) Later, a phone call from Gabriel enticed him back to Solid State Logic, where he worked from 1983 to 1997 and rose up the ranks to become president and CEO.

So Plaskitt was on hand at the Grammys last month in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters to see Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr share the stage for a prime-time performance in the run-up to this week’s furor over Beatlemania’s 50th anniversary in the States.

Bands like the Beatles, Plaskitt said, inspired studio engineers of the 1960s to innovate more quickly and build the technological foundations of the modern recording industry. In that sense, the Beatles’ impact was similar to President John F. Kennedy’s prodding of rocket scientists to land on the moon within the decade.

The Beatles grew from “what was essentially a live performance of ‘Please Please Me’ in 1963,” which was rushed to market by Parlophone Records to “the sophistication of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ just four years later in 1967,” Plaskitt said.

So in the wake of Beatlemania came the notion that pop music was not just a teen dance soundtrack but professional audio art — enabled by the likes of Plaskitt.

Punk rock would have a thing or two to say about that in the 1970s, but that’s another story.

***

Reconnecting with Plaskitt in recent weeks led me to a conversation with another character in the Beatles’ orbit: May Pang.

Pang was a 13-year-old girl in New York’s Spanish Harlem with a transistor radio pressed against her ear when she discovered the band.

“I remember walking on the streets of New York and walking past the Plaza Hotel,” she said of the Beatles’ time there in February 1964 during their appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” “And all these girls are screaming on the streets and you go, ‘Wow.’ ”

“They changed the generation,” she said. “If they ate something, we wanted it.”

This daughter of Chinese immigrants later worked for Apple, where she met Plaskitt. They remain friends.

In the mid-1970s, she became famous as John Lennon’s girlfriend during the latter’s “lost weekend” in Los Angeles. (The “weekend” actually lasted nearly two years, with time in both New York and L.A.)

This year marks not only the 50th anniversary of Beatlemania but also the 40th anniversary of what arguably was the most notorious period in any of the Beatles’ lives after their breakup.

“Now it’s become the most infamous time,” Pang said, “but at the same time it was the most creative time for him.”

It is Pang’s voice you hear whisper in the song “#9 Dream” from Lennon’s “Walls and Bridges” album, released in September 1974. The “lost weekend” also spanned the albums “Mind Games” and the infamous “Rock ’n’ Roll” collection of oldies covers produced by a crazed Phil Spector.

“Who would’ve thought when I was growing up that this was going to be part of my life?” Pang still marvels.

It’s a gross understatement to say that Pang, 63, has enjoyed a fascinating front-row seat to the music business. She also forged her own career in music publishing and in the 1990s was married and had two children with Tony Visconti, the famed producer of David Bowie, T. Rex and countless other artists. Her choice of wedding song: the Beatles’ “In My Life.”

Pang even witnessed the official end of the Beatles. She, Lennon and the latter’s son, Julian, happened to be vacationing at Disney World in Florida on Dec. 29, 1974, when the contract to dissolve the band was delivered with the signatures of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) already on paper.

Lennon seemed to glance out the window with a wistful gaze and paused a beat before adding his name.

She snapped a photo of Lennon in the middle of his signature, capturing the belated demise of the world’s most important band. (Is that even debatable?)

But it turns out that when she was a teen in Spanish Harlem, Pang’s favorite Beatle was Ringo.

Even Lennon was incredulous when she told him that, she said.

“Well, blue eyes” is how she explains it to this day.

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns, blog posts and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/munson. Connect with him on Facebook (Kyle Munson's Iowa) and Twitter (@KyleMunson).